Great Mistakes
by Elena George
Summary: A drug case and a plane crash challenge the team


Rating:  PG-13 (mild profanity)

Disclaimer:  The characters don't belong to me.  The story is for the enjoyment of the reader only.

Great Mistakes

Days ago, Tony had been sent to the Navy's boot camp at Great Lakes, north of Chicago.  A recruit had died under mysterious conditions – naked and drowned at 0300 in the training pool.  The local agent was on maternity leave, and the Navy was loathe to turn it over to civilian investigators.  Ducky had gone with him, largely because he ever so much wanted to visit friends at DePaul.  That left Gibbs and Kate to hold down the fort as Abby processed evidence that Tony was sending back via FedEx.

Abby found something unexpected in both the recruit's "tox" screen and on his dungarees which he had cast away before skinny dipping to his death.  There were both heroin and cocaine present!  She alerted Tony then told Gibbs.

Gibbs called across the desks, "Kate, grab your gear!"

Gibbs threw his Go-Bag across his shoulder.  He picked up the coffee for one last swig before depositing it into the trashcan by his desk.

"Where are we off to now?" she wanted to know.

"Great Lakes," he said without further comment.

Kate pulled her backpack off the floor and slung it over her left shoulder, "Are we driving or flying?" she inquired.

"Flying," was Gibbs terse response.

She struggled to keep up with his longer strides, "We don't have tickets…" she began as the elevator doors open magically.  McGee stepped off as Gibbs moved onto the lift.

"Hi Boss!" he greeted Gibbs cheerfully.

Kate got on, "Hi McGee."

The doors shut quickly at Gibbs insistent command.  Kate leaned toward the closing door just long enough to hear McGee's chipper reply.  Then she cut Gibbs a nasty look.  The trip to Anacostia Naval Air Station was quick and quiet.  Gibbs swooped through a drive-in to reload his caffeine as Kate pawed through her backpack.  She was certain that something was not going to be there when she needed it.  As Gibbs guzzled his fresh coffee, Kate made notes on her PDA and sent an email to her current beau to let him know she'd be out of town for a few days.

At Anacostia, Gibbs parked near the NALO (Navy airlift office).  He strode into the office with Kate in tow.  She watched his every move, studying what was done and how.  She'd learned that overt questions were not always well received if Gibbs was in a sour mood, which he seemed to be displaying presently.  Gibbs put his coffee down on the counter, pulled out his NCIS ID and presented it to the petty officer behind the desk.

"I need a flight to Great Lakes.  Today," he commanded.

"Official business?" inquired the young man who gave Kate the once over then again.

Kate offered her NCIS ID to him, "Yes.  It's official," she spoke up.

Gibbs raised his eyebrow.

"May I?" the petty officer asked to borrow the IDs.

He took them back to the desk and logged into the computer.  He scanned the results.

"Looks like I have a C-12 hop coming in from O'Hare and 'Great Mistakes' in about two hours.  We can turn him back around if it's a rush, sir, ma'am."

"That would be good," Gibbs looked around for a place to sit.

"Aye, sir.  I'll have the pilot and ground crew notified," he finished then handed the IDs back to the agents.

Kate followed Gibbs to a corner and dropped her pack.  The petty officer watched her every move, fascinated by her grace.

"What's a C-12 hop?" Kate whispered to Gibbs; she had already figured out that 'Great Mistakes' was a nickname for Great Lakes.

He looked up and then out the terminal window.  Finding a small aircraft parked nearby, he pointed to it.

"It's sort of like that one, twin engine turboprop.  Let's hope we don't have to ride with the cargo configuration," he stated flatly.  "Oh here, you'll need these.  C-12s are loud."  
  
Gibbs handed her yellow roll-up earplugs.

"How loud?" Kate wondered.

"Like being inside the mosquito's belly," laughed the petty officer.

Kate looked up and saw the laughter in both men's eyes and faces.  She rolled her eyes and took a deep breath, thinking that this could be a very long trip.

As soon as the aircraft was taxied to the terminal, three passengers disembarked.  They made their way into the terminal and checked back through the petty officer's computer.  Meanwhile, the ground crew refueled the plane and wiped down the windows.  The flight attendant, dressed in an aviation green jumpsuit, climbed up the stairs into the terminal after the last of the passengers had already passed through.

"Hey Charlie!" he called out to the petty officer who sat behind the desk.  "You got any Mylanta under the counter?"

He nodded, handing him an aqua bottle, "Bill.  I've got two passengers for you guys to take back to Great Lakes this afternoon."

"Great," he turned to see Gibbs and Kate in the corner by the window.  He nodded toward them.

"Man, I'm not feeling so good.  I think I ate some bad seafood back in Chicago.  You know how hard it is to fly when you feel like you're gonna puke?" he held his head.

Gibbs got up and crossed over to the counter.

"I don't need a steward nearly as much as I need a flight to Great Lakes," he pressed his case.

"Sir, it's not that I don't want to fly with you…" he began.

"Look, petty officer, I don't need you, if you can't fly.  I must get to Great Lakes now," Gibbs insisted again.

"The SOP says…"

"I don't care what the SOP says," Gibbs moved forward toward him, showing the butt of his pistol.

Kate joined the discussion, "Would it be okay if the pilots were willing to go with out you this afternoon.  They could pick you back up on the return flight tomorrow?  Would that work?"

Bill was not quite sure what to say when the Lieutenant Commander came through the door, "Petty Officer Brown needs to see the 'Doc.'"

A look of horror washed across Bill Brown's face.  He stumbled toward the head, "Excuse me, sir!"

"Agent Gibbs, NCIS," Gibbs offered the pilot his credentials.  "Agent Todd and I need to get to Great Lakes today.  I don't need a flight steward.  I need a flight."

The pilot thought about it a moment, then he agreed.

"Okay.  You know how to make coffee?" he asked Kate.

"Sure.  I can make coffee," she replied not wanting to make waves.  Gibbs with coffee was better than Gibbs without coffee.  "Point me toward that coffee pot," she glibly joked.

Gibbs glowered.

Instead of stowing their gear in the belly, Gibbs opted for a let's go now approach.  The two backpacks were tucked under the seats.  Gibbs put earplugs in; Kate followed suit.  She surveyed her surroundings.  It was Spartan inside:  one row of seats against the starboard bulkhead, another foursome in the middle with a table in between them on the port side.  Kate was fairly sure that the table was not for playing cards.  Next to the aft storage area was a small space that was curtained off from the rest of the cabin.  Gibbs had taken the facing forward seat and left Kate with the one facing aft.  Shortly after take-off, Kate found her way back to the galley while Gibbs pulled out a file and spread some of the contents across the table.  After a few minutes of getting acquainted with where things were, she began brewing some caffeine for her boss and the pilots.  While it was dripping into the carafe, she looked around the rest of the tiny cabin.

"Hey Gibbs, where's the head?" she wanted to know.

Gibbs lifted his head, removed an earplug, and looked at her, "What?"

She shouted a little louder, "The head, where's the head on this plane?"

He nodded and got up.  In the rear of the compartment was a curtained off area.  Gibbs pulled back the curtain, "There."

There was no toilet seat.  There was only a small hole about the size of a urinal in a porta-potty.  Kate just stared for a moment thinking that surely Gibbs had to be kidding.  Then she remembered it was Gibbs, not Tony.  Gibbs made his way back to his seat, fastened his belt, and picked up the file folder he'd been reading through when Kate asked her question.

"Coffee smells good," he hollered forward.  He even smiled a little before returning to his work.

Kate just closed her eyes and wished that she'd gone before they left.  No coffee for her!

"One tankard of coffee, coming up," she said as she brought it back to Gibbs.

He looked up, "Thanks, Kate.  I really appreciate it."

She nodded.  Curiosity got the better of her.  She wandered back to the makeshift head.  She pulled the curtain back and looked in.  It was even more horrible than she'd first thought.  She could see the ground through the hole.  Disheartened, she returned to her seat facing Gibbs after serving the pilots two hot mugs of coffee.  He had the file, so she pulled out a "junk" book that was in her pack, and then shoved it back under the seat.  After a while, she became bored with the book and took a stretch.  Gibbs was rubbing his forehead.

"What's wrong?" she shouted over the engine noise.

"Headache, sinuses, I think."

"We've still got a ways to go, why don't you lie down and take a nap?" she asked.

Kate got up and looked for pillows and blankets.  She retrieved two sets.

"Here, a nap will do you good," she insisted.  "And I've got some Sudafed.  That might help clear you up."

Gibbs had not seen this side of her before.  He smiled.  It'd been a long while since a woman actually seemed to care about his welfare.  Maybe a nap would ease the misery, or at least, he would be asleep and not aware of it.  He took a deep breath.

"Yeah, maybe that's a good idea," he took a pillow from her.  Gibbs hated flying backwards or sideways, so he fussed with the new idea of taking a nap going sideways.  He flipped up armrests on the bulkhead seats to make himself a little couch so that his head, at least, was pointed toward the front.  He tried to settle into some comfortable position.  He was too long by a foot to stretch out completely.  He found that curling up on his left side gave him just enough room and did not interfere with his pistol.  Gibbs was a Marine, a Devil Dog, who could sleep anywhere and in any position.  In the Gulf War, he'd caught a few winks leaning against the shattered remains of hangers at the Al Jaber Airfield outside Kuwait City.  He realized that he was much more exhausted than he'd expected.  Within moments, he drifted off into a twilight sleep.  He was vaguely aware of Kate draping the blanket over him.  He heard her shut the blinds in the cabin.  However, Gibbs did not hear her return to her seat and open the folder that he'd been pouring over a few minutes before.

Every now and again, she'd sneak a peek out the window.  They were over the Appalachians; she could see the dense forest below her.  It was a sea of different shades of green.  The summer updrafts made for a slightly bumpy ride.  She was sure that this would be the way to see it come fall…if she could figure out how to get on the NALO flight from Washington westward.  Tony and Ducky would meet them at the MAC terminal at one end of O'Hare, and together, they'd drive back to the training base.  She hoped that Tony had gotten them rooms at the BOQ or Navy Lodge.  She just wanted to have a few minutes to herself and a nice hot shower was how she planned to start that.

The plane bucked a little more than it had before.  Kate looked back to see Gibbs still asleep.  She shook her head thinking that he must be able to sleep anywhere.  It was not long ago, when he was doggedly hunting Ari that he'd slept several nights at his desk.  It was a good thing the office had a full service locker room.

The plane shuddered and banked downward to the left.  Off-balance, but buckled in, she whipped open the window blind only to find the left engine on fire.

"Gibbs!" she screamed at her sleeping colleague who had secured himself to the couch with a loosely fastened belt.

Gibbs was beginning to stir.  Not even he could sleep through this wild gyrations of this crippled aircraft.  He struggled to get back to the seat next to her, facing aft.

"Buckle up.  I think we're going in," he said rather matter-of-factly.  "Facing aft is the better position safety wise."

Kate gave him a wild-eyed look and tightened her belt.  They heard a loud hissing sound.  The engine fire was out.  Kate's fingers were dug into the armrests.  The plane pitched back to something that resembled level flight.

"Uh, folks, sorry for the bumps back there," apologized the pilot over the intercom.  "We had a little fire.  Good thing about Navy planes is that they are built to fly on one engine," he chuckled.  "I'm going to radio to make an emergency landing at Charleston, West Virginia.  It's the closest airport to where we are presently."

Kate looked at Gibbs to see what his reaction would be.  He actually looked a little shaken.  She turned loose of the armrest and took his hand.  He looked over at her and gave her a little smile of reassurance.

The plane began to descend.  They reopened all the window blinds to see where they were.  Gibbs looked out the starboard side.  Kate was stuck when she saw the charred engine cowling out the port side.  Both began to breathe a little easier.  Kate was the first to settle back into the chair.  Still, she was not about to pick up the book or file other than to put them back in the baggage.  She could not possibly concentrate on anything other than her "Hail Marys" and "Our Fathers" that she had begun to recite when the plane first dove at the ground.  Just about the time Gibbs thought he could breathe a normal breath, the plane pitched again.

"Oh my God!" slipped out of his lips, for he saw the one good engine on fire.  "Kate, we're going to crash," he yelled and slammed the window blinds closest to them shut.

He bent her down and followed suit.  He knew the "feel" of a crashing aircraft.  He'd been fortunate enough to survive a CH-46 crash early in his Marine training when the helo crashed into the Pamlico Sound, off the North Carolina coast.  The pilot regained a small amount of control, but not enough to remedy the situation.  A hiss of flame retardant put the fire out.  A louder series of hisses emptied the fuel tanks and purged them.  Gibbs was praying – _no fire, no fire, please God, no fire!_  The nose of the aircraft lifted up as the whole plane bounced around in the sky.  A more horrible sound came next – the plane scraping against the tallest treetops.

The pilots lost all control.  Wings tore off.  The tail separated from the rest of the fuselage.  The crashing did not end for two excruciatingly long minutes.  Bits and pieces of plane sheared off and fell to the forest floor.  It spun and tossed through the trees, smashing the wood as it went down and down.  At long last, the remnants of cabin and cockpit found the ground and stopped moving.  Nothing else was moving either.  A trail of bits and pieces extended, slashing through the pines and broadleaf trees for nearly a mile.  It began to rain, gently at first.

Kate was doubled over in her seat.  For most of the ride down through the trees, she had faced aft, head tucked down in her lap and Gibbs arms protectively across her back.  The pull on her waist and buffeting was incredible.  Near the end of the fall, the plane's port side struck a taller tree and spun the entire cabin so that front was back and back was front.  Gibbs now lay sprawled across what remained of the cabin decking.  He was flat on his back, arms partially extended.  A nasty gash decorated his brow; obviously, he had hit the opposing bulkhead hard.  There was a red smear where his head impacted violently.  His belt had not been sufficient to hold him in place.  Despite all that, the main cabin had remained largely intact.  However, the cockpit had detached somewhere on the cascade through trees and could be found in several pieces scattered half a mile from where the cabin landed.  Both pilots had given their best and died trying.  The rain gradually washed away their blood and tears.

Kate began to come to her senses half an hour after the plane stopped moving.  She felt as if she'd been sliced in two.  Her head ached and reeled from the experience.  She was not even sure she was still alive.  _Maybe this was purgatory…purgatory and Gibbs hasn't got any coffee.  No, that was surely hell._  She slipped sideways and lifted the belt's buckle open.  Her weight tumbled to the deck.  Kate thought that perhaps she'd just stay here for a little while.  It wasn't moving even though her head still was.  The rumble of thunder grumbled through her groggy mind.  There was light coming into the cabin from the many-ruptured places in the outer bulkhead.  She could see Gibbs and wondered if he was still alive.  Pausing to gather the last of her physical strength, she crawled to her colleague.

"Gibbs," she whispered.  "You alive?"

Her hand gently felt for a carotid pulse.  There it was – slow but strong and steady.  Kate gasped for air and let it out.  Then she curled up next to Gibbs fallen form, careful not to inflict further injury; but she did need to be near him.  She was unsure how long she'd slept tucked in next to him.  When she awoke, she noticed that twilight had come and was nearly gone.  Gibbs had not moved an inch, grunted, or even made a sound.  Again, she felt for his pulse.  Again, she was relieved to find the strong, steady bump, bump, bump of his blood coursing through his body.

Kate rubbed her neck, and looked over at the still prone Gibbs.

"Hey, Gibbs, you wanna wake up now?" she jested.  "I could sure use your company."

Kate struggled to her feet.  Shaking her head, she tried to find what was left of the galley.  She opened drawer after drawer until she found a towel.  She brought it back over and began to clean up Gibbs' face, which was caked in his dried blood.  He stirred a little, letting out a quiet grunt. She sat back.

"Gibbs?"

He moaned softly as he fought for consciousness.  Gibbs was aware that every fibre of his body now hurt.  Before, it had only been his head.  His ears seemed dull then he remembered the earplugs.  He did have a vague idea that someone was with him.  He remembered – it was Kate.  That's who was with him.  Slowly his eyes began to open; he started to say something, but choked on dust from the crash.  He sputtered awake.

"Easy there, Gibbs," Kate comforted him.  "Lie still until we know what broken and what's not."

Suddenly, the sound of her voice cut through the haze.  He was awake now and in real pain.

"Ah, ah, my shoulder!" he screamed.

Kate noticed now that his left shoulder did look funny.  His jacket had hidden the dislocated joint.

"Lie still, let me see what I can do about a sling," Kate tried to reassure him as she took the earplugs out of his ears.  "You probably have a concussion."

Gibbs heard the rain pick up.  It hammered against the metal skin of the remains of the cabin exacerbating his throbbing brain-housing-group.  Every few minutes it was punctuated by the grumble of thunder in the distance.  Lightning painted the inside with strange colours.

Kate again rummaged about the cabin.  She had recalled that an emergency first aid kit had been attached to the side of the aft bulkhead when they took off.  In between lightning flashes, she thought she could make out the outline.  _Yes, there it was.  Thank God, at least a few things were left to them._  She found the flashlight bolted beside it and searched the box for the bandages and slings.  She was grateful that Navy was careful to maintain a properly supplied kit.  Most of the kits she'd seen in the past had been raided for a little of this and a little of that.

"How do your ribs feel?" she wanted to know.

Gibbs coughed a little, "Okay, I guess.  It's my shoulder and my head."

"I can see," Kate said as she examined his injury.  "What I'm trying to do is decided how best to do this…I guess I'll just bind it up where it is."

"No, help me out of this jacket," he stated as he began to fight the right sleeve.

"I can cut you out easier," she offered the Metzenbaum scissors.

"The hell you will," he tersely replied.  "This is my lucky jacket."

"Lucky jacket, Gibbs?  I can't picture you being superstitious," Kate responded.

"Yeah, well, we're still alive, aren't we?  It's my lucky jacket," Gibbs grumbled.

Rather than make a case, she tried her best to help him without making his shoulder any angrier with the physical movement.  Gibbs ground his teeth and held his breath.  Finally, he did get his good arm free.  The jacket slid off easily.  Only then did his breathing even come close to "normal."  Gibbs leaned forward just a little and panted.  Kate waited for him to let her know he was ready for the next phase – applying the sling and bandage.  Slowly, his head popped back up and he nodded.  He held his breath and grimaced as she slipped the first corner of the sling under his arm.  From behind him, she noticed that his wrist did not look quite right either.

"Gibbs, what's with your wrist?" she asked.

He shook his head, trying not to breath.

"Hurry up, Kate," he grunted and took another deep breath.

She got the sling under his injured arm and tied off.  The knot sat just below his collarbone and away from the back of his neck.  Gibbs panted for air.  Kate waited.  He nodded again.  This time, she bound his arm against his body, to prevent movement and greater injury.

"Hopefully, this will keep your arm still, and maybe, it won't hurt quite so much," Kate offered.

He bit his lower lip and nodded.  Kate noticed one tear make its way down his cheek.  She was tempted to wipe it away, but she also sensed that this was a man who was not accustomed to having women see him cry.  She ignored it.

"There," she exclaimed as she leaned back to admire her work.  "Let me see if I can find something to take the edge off the pain.  Be right back."

As she moved back to the kit, Gibbs wiped his face and tried to take a deeper breath.  He pulled up short.  He did not think his ribs were broken, but he was acutely aware that they did hurt.  Kate had found some Tylenol and some aspirin.

"What's your pleasure?" she offered both.

"Gimme both, Kate."

She raised her eyebrows and fed him two of each.  Gibbs scooted over to the bulkhead and slumped back against it.

"Good thing, we still have some of the cabin and a roof over our heads," he commented.  "Sounds like it will rain all night long."

"It could," she remarked.

Kate brought over the two blankets she had found while they were still aloft.  She did her best to wrap Gibbs up in them where he sat.

"Don't want you getting cold and shocky on me," she told him as she attempted to bundle him up.

"Thanks, Kate," he responded.  "Come here, don't want you getting cold on me either," he offered her a place next to him under the blankets.  "It could be a long night."

Thunder rumbled through the dark West Virginia sky.

Tony and Ducky went to the MAC terminal on schedule; however, there was no plane to meet.  The sergeant behind the desk paged his supervisor who brought the two into the inner office.  He sat them down and offered fresh coffee.

"I'm very sorry for your loss," the major tried to console Tony and Ducky.  "The Air Guard out of Charleston is pursuing a search for the aircraft as we speak."

Tony and Ducky were stunned and stung.  Gibbs and Kate – gone – it was unfathomable.  The major left them to their private grief.  Tony just stared at the floor in silence.  Ducky pulled off his glasses, pulled out a handkerchief, and dabbed his eyes.  He'd known Gibbs the longest of any of the team members, and he dearly loved Kate.

Abby and McGee were equally undone.  Abby thoroughly enjoyed working with Gibbs, and Kate was sort of like an older sister, albeit straight-laced, to her.  McGee was devastated by the sense of loss.  While not enjoying Gibbs' often-rough treatment, he knew that Gibbs trusted him and depended on his expertise.  McGee knew that Gibbs was the professional that he wanted to become.  Now his mentor was lost.  The Director was not so willing to let go.  He refused to plan any kind of Memorial Service until he saw the remains.  His best agent was not dead until he saw him dead.

The Air Guard was dispatched to take a look.  The control tower had minutes before received an emergency rerouting call from a pilot of a Navy C-12 coming out of the DC area.  He had reported one engine fire, which left him with only one to fly on.  The tower reminded the Air Guard pilots to look hard since a C-12 was the size of a small commuter turboprop and not likely to make much of a scar.  Feeling the sense of camaraderie of fellow service members, the Commanding Officer dispatched two surveillance planes to look through the woods east of the city.  It was about one hundred miles to the state line, so the search grid was laid out with a one hundred mile arc.  The pilots began to fly the spokes at the inner edges where they suspected the flight had gone down, based on radar telemetry, and working their way outward.  The sky roiled with the beginnings of local thunderstorms.  It was summer, and storms popped up over the mountains all the time.  Within in two hours, the weather was bad enough to call it off until the storms relented.  No sense crashing a recon bird into a mountain!

Gibbs awoke first.  He was certain that even his hair hurt.  Not moving was not an option though.  As gently as he could, he tried to slip out.  Kate stirred.

"Where you going?" Kate asked.  "No Starbucks in the neighborhood," she smirked.

"Head call.  You know about mother nature, right?" he quipped back.

"Good point," she began.  "Which way you going?"

"This way," he pointed.

"Then I'll go the other way – no fair peeking," she teased.

It was foggy outside, surprising Gibbs.  He knew that the hollows of the West Virginia mountains could on occasion harbor mists and fog that made passage difficult, but he was unprepared for this.  It would turn out that the weather guessers in Charleston had missed the warm front aspects of the front, which had passed in the late afternoon.  Kate was more annoyed that concerned.

"Hey Gibbs!" she called out.  "There is a small stream over here."

Gibbs inched his way slowly over to where his colleague was, "Good!" he remarked.  "How do you feel about shellfish?"

"I love lobster, but we are nowhere near Maine," she chuckled.

"Not what I was thinking.  I'm thinking crawdads."

"Ah, but I don't know how to cook New Orleans style," she looked at him, waiting for the next rejoinder.

"We'll boil the little suckers," Gibbs never took his eyes off the stream.

He decided that first they'd need to get some preparations made for cooking and the like while they waited for rescue.  In this fog, he was reticent to go looking for the pilots.  He could only hope that they, too, had survived by the grace of God.

"Kate, what's left of the galley?" he wanted to know.

She shrugged, "Not a whole lot."

"We'll need a pot or something to cook in," he noted.  "We'll also need something to boil water in, unless you want to end up taking worm pills when we get back."

Kate's nose instinctively wrinkled, "Not if we can avoid it."

"Go!" he demanded as he simultaneously hunted for something to help him acquire the little creatures.  More than that he hoped that maybe, just maybe, there was coffee in the galley.  His headache could use some about now.

Kate returned with two steel coffee pots that survived, dented, but intact from the impact.  One she filled with water; the other was empty.  One by one, Kate plucked feisty crawdads out of the stream and into the empty pot.  Gibbs watched in amazement.  After she had collected a fair number of them, she stood back up.

"I had three brothers, and we went to our cousins' farm every summer," she said with a slight smile after seeing Gibbs' surprise.  "Your job is to get a fire going with wet wood."

"Gee, thanks, Kate."

Under piles of wet pine needles, Gibbs did find some pine straw that was relatively dry.  He gathered some pinecones and twigs.  Kate pulled together small metal fragments to use as a makeshift stove if Gibbs was able to pull off fire.  Together, they created a small but effective cook fire.  Kate put the water pot on the stove and waited for it to boil.  Ten minutes later, she dumped the crawdads into the roiling pot.

"Time these, will you, Gibbs?" she began.  "I'm guessing that they'll be ready in ten minutes."

Gibbs set his watch timer then retreated to the shelter.  He found some plates and silverware in one of the overhead compartments in the galley.  He found that he could not set the table back up.  He shoulder simply protested too much.  Kate would have to do that if it was to be done.

"Ten minutes!" he hollered.

Kate pulled the pot off the fire and brought it back inside.

"If you can get the table back up, we can eat like regular folks," Gibbs pointed to the collapsed table.

Kate set the pot on the galley counter.  She looked under the fallen table for the support.

"The underpinnings are broken," she told him.  "I don't think it'll work again."

"Well, I guess food is more important," Gibbs said.  "Here are some plates and utensils."

Kate fished the red crawdads out of the pot, distributing them on the plates.  She handed one plate to Gibbs and then began to peel her breakfast shellfish.  Gibbs just watched wondering how a one armed man was going to do that.  It was clear that not only was his shoulder screwed up, but his wrist was also broken.  He had lost most of the movement on that side of his upper body.

"Oh, I almost forgot," she got up to go back outdoors to the fire.

Gibbs popped the small crustaceans into his mouth and ate them, shells and all.  He did not like the feel of the shells, but he was hungry.  His mother's words came back to him about eating anything in front of you if you were hungry enough.  He gave that thought a nostalgic smile.

Kate brought in the other pot in which she brewed coffee the old fashioned way.  The grounds remained at the bottom of the pot.  Still it was caffeine and to Gibbs, that was enough.

"Do I smell what I think I smell?  Is that coffee?" he was delighted.

"Sure is," she started," Watch out for the grounds at the bottom of the pot.  Drink sparingly, since we don't have an unlimited supply to meet your addiction."

Gibbs met that remark with an ugly stare.

The search was suspended until the fog lifted.  Gibbs and Kate knew that they were on their own until that time.  They were too far down in the hollow to get a cell phone signal.  The cockpit might have had a satellite phone, but it was nowhere near them.  They had only a general idea of the direction in which the cockpit rested in the woods, but neither felt up to a hike.  Gibbs was physically beaten down, and Kate was not exactly dressed for a stroll in the forest.  So for the next few days, they'd be eating crawdads and taking wannabe baths in the little stream.  Gibbs told her that the important thing was to stay with the wreckage.  It would be easier to spot than a hiker under a canopy of trees or tangled up in dense undergrowth.  At least the crash had opened up the forest floor to observation.

It was well into the afternoon of the third day when a surveillance aircraft spotted part of the wreckage.  As evening approached, the dead pilots' remains had been removed by a team of Air Force specialists, Spec Ops sergeants, who had made the descent by fast roping through the trees from their hovering Blackhawk.  They had radioed back that this was only part of the missing aircraft, a small part.

Gibbs and Kate could hear them in the near distance.  They tore wildly through their wreckage looking for something with which to signal before they ran out of light and luck.  There were no flares, nothing in the remnants of the cabin.  Gibbs had a signal mirror in his pack, but it would do no good after dark.  The Blackhawk was out of visual range, too.  Gibbs was more frustrated than before.

Kate began to pile wood on the cook fire.  Gibbs joined in hoping that a fire would not be mistaken for campers in the woods.  He prayed that it would be an attention getter.  As the Blackhawk lifted upward, it rotated back toward Charleston.  It would soon be time to put on the night vision goggles.  As they sped across the rugged terrain below them, one of the crewmen saw the smoke.  The pilot made a wide turn back toward that spot.

Again, the Spec Ops guys descended to a plane crash site.  This time they were greeted by survivors.  Kate, then Gibbs, was hoisted into the helo for the trip to Charleston.  Kate made a mental note that the horse collar hoist was just too scary for words.  Still, she admired those men of Spec Ops even more than previously.  Gibbs' ascent was made in a Stokes litter.  Before lifting him to the safety of the Blackhawk, the Air Force medic had sedated him and splinted his broken body for transport.

Tony had wrapped up the case of a boot camp Company Commander, Petty Officer Second Class Ray Johnson, drug dealer; and McGee had been instrumental in solving the case.  McGee wanted to prove himself and make Gibbs proud of him.  Johnson had been selling to recruits for three months.  Now he was going to the brig for years.

Kate stopped by Bethesda to pick Gibbs up the day he was finally discharged.  She wasn't sure if he was discharged because he was ready to go home or because the staff was tired of him.  A brown paper sack sat at the foot of the bed.  Gibbs stared out the window, down at the parking lot below.  His broken left wrist was in a bright Marine Corps red fiberglass cast.  That arm was tucked tightly against his body in a navy blue sling.  Kate had slipped in unnoticed.

"You ready?" she asked as she came closer to him offering him a fresh cup of caffeine.

He turned around, looking much better than he had a nearly a week.  The lacerations and abrasions from the crash were still present on his face, but they were healing.

"Doing fine.  How about you?" Gibbs smiled back, putting the cup on the bedside tray table.

Kate nodded.  His right hand reached up to touch her cheek.  Kate blushed at his unexpected touch.  He stopped at her chin, tilting her head up toward himself; he kissed her tenderly on the lips.

Remaining close, "What about rule #12?" she whispered.

"Suspended for the moment," he whispered back.


End file.
